A tip for people explaining Haskell to beginners:
The acts of reading and speaking are closely integrated in the brain.
When I am unable to 'say' something it is much more difficult to 'read'
and absorb the text. There appears to be a misconception that it somehow
helps beginners to understand things if they are not told how to 'say'
these strange new symbols. Certainly for me, and I would guess for most
people, this idea is completely wrong. When I 'read' a new operator
such as >>= I want know how to 'say' it.
I don't mean that posts on Haskell-Cafe should do this, but books
and articles aimed at people who haven't used Haskell before should
always vocalize the symbols as soon as they are introduced.
On a related note, if there isn't already, it would be nice to have a
page in the wiki that gives good ways of vocalizing the operators and
vocalizing them in simple code snippets. I might get round to doing
this sometime, maybe just a table something like this :
Operator Formal Informal
-------- ------ --------
:: has type
-> maps to to
example
f :: Int -> Int f has type Int to Int
Or, to descend into trivia, a subtle distinction might be usefully
made between = and ==
f i = 54 * i f i is 54 times i
x == 27 x equals 27
Richard.